Hurt people don't always hurt people

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I remember being in church a while back and a pastor was preaching. He told the congregation something profound on that Sunday morning, and it was just in passing, without any prelude to the statement and he moved on without an altar call.

At that time I was sitting in the third row and my sandals were flipping up and down against the rubber on the floor.

Once he had made that statement, he created a space in which to offer counseling to youth who have aged out of foster care. The room had plastic chairs and a whiteboard filled with words of affirmation. I have to say the church room doesn’t have anything notable to look at but all the people that enter that door leave in a different way than they entered. The minister knows this and I'm sure that’s probably enough reward for him.

There are enough children in foster care that when they reach the age of 18, the general population won’t have the capacity to love them anymore. So to those who have been treated with care, most if not all have learned to choose their words carefully when they speak. They ask you if you’ve eaten and they really wait to hear your response. I always wondered whether it was a learned behavior or if was a natural instinct that developed with the hurt just like grass growing up through the cracks of asphalt.

A person will not become that kind of person by random chance. A person has to decide, likely more than once to become that kind of person, even more likely on a day which they could have made the decision easily not to. People of that character are usually underestimated. There is far more than just enough.